The in-person component of the OTD program!

There are many post-professional occupational therapy doctorate programs (versus entry level), and I think the vast majority of them are online. However, some have an in-person component at least once a semester. I chose one that did, because I hear that it is really helpful to meet your cohort and professors. It helps you learn who everyone is, and better appreciate their input and collaboration.

I have now spent five weeks in my OTD program and have encountered all the names of different people, but I cannot keep them straight to save my life. I know that there are quite a few men in the program (semi unusual in typical OT world), and that I don’t have much experience in comparison to most of my cohort. Many of them have been in practice 20+ years and are managers/directors. A surprising number of them seem to be school-based. Only three names so far have stood out to me. Let’s just call them Anna, Banna, and Danna.

Anna is always the first to post on every forum and I know nothing about her, but I know if I see a single posting on a newly opened forum for that week’s work, that it’s her! I can’t figure out how she does it!

Banna is a therapist in the “small world” category who knows one of my former fieldwork supervisors and lives in Tennessee where I used to live. She has ten trillion years of experience and very quickly emerged as an outstanding engager/encourager.

Danna is a sweet and enthusiastic younger therapist (I think), who has tried doing some affirmation writing with her students after I brought it up, and I can tell by our interactions that we have some similarities in our mindset.

There are tons of other great people, I just haven’t had their names pop out at me. Because there is no scaffolding to any of these people (in my head that is), I haven’t been able to link their information to a name, and even though I’ve seen their name and info in tons of forums, I just keep not attaching it as data about the person. They should require us to write a quick biography, with a clear picture, that we all get a copy of in one accumulated file! Because we all wrote one in like four different forum spots, but it got confusing quickly.

So, now it’s time to go meet everyone! (Hey, robbers: I don’t live alone, sorry.) The last few days have been super stressful trying to catch up, and I’ve been overwhelmed, but I know everyone is. And I am proud of myself for not “shutting down”, and doing my best to get on top of things. I worked hard to preview and plan for all my typical anxiety triggers, and got a lot of resources (internal and external) to help me handle the energy conservation components.

I realized, for example, that on Wednesday night, there is a big dinner reservation at a local restaurant and I had said I would go. But when I thought about it, I realized that with my fatigue issues and how much anxiety I expend on such a dinner (getting there, interacting with everyone socially in a large environment, the challenge of dividing a large bill correctly, and the drastically decreased amount of time to rest), that it will overdraft that day’s energy budget, and I will be at a deficit for the next day. So I won’t go after all.

I did bring my hula hoop, all coiled up for travel, but it’s a little big for my bag so cross your fingers that it’s not irretrievably warped when I get there. Very good for stress relief/fun. 🙂 I wanted to bring a giant one, but even coiled it was way too big for my suitcase.

This is kind of like a business trip, and I realized today that I’ve never been on one! They want us to dress business casual and I had to go back and dig through my closet to find some. I was trying on clothes this morning and it was very Goldilocks. “These pants are too small…these pants are too big…these pants are juuusttttt….more or less….right.”

The woman next to me in the airport just commented on her missing daughter and said, “it must be a long cigarette she’s smoking.” AHAHAHAHAAH yikes.

My plane is running late – was supposed to join a few others on a shuttle, but it’s not looking good. Oh well, hopefully it will work out! I already took the less drowsy Dramamine – the 45 minute shuttle ride will otherwise be an issue. I love Sharpies, because I always get confused as to what Dramamine is drowsy versus not drowsy when it’s not in its original box and is just in the silver poppies because its just the ingredient. So I Sharpied it on the silver poppy and that made my life easier today. ::beams:: Also fun to sharpie gift card balances on the gift card.

Okay I don’t have ADD but I am bouncing around. Because I can. And wow, really I should be studying right now. So I will stop writing this insanely long message. All I can say is, I know I will be glad to meet everyone, and I also know it will be a major test of my functional capacity these days!

Update: Made it to Utah and am in my hotel room. Unfortunately there were some delays/misses but alas, alas is well. Time to look at stats ::whimpers:: 🙂